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Textual notes on Plato's Sophist*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David B. Robinson
David B. Robinson
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

In editing Plato's Sophist for the new OCT vol. I, ed. E. A. Duke, W. F. Hicken, W. S. M. Nicoll, D. B. Robinson, and J. C. G. Strachan (Oxford, 1995), there was less chance of giving novel information about W = Vind. Supp. Gr. 7 for this dialogue than for others in the volume, since Apelt's edition of 1897 was used by Burnet in 1900 and was based on Apelt's own collation of W. The result was better than the somewhat confused information printed by Burnet, even in his 1905 reprint, for W for the other dialogues in vol. I. (This seems perhaps to have arisen from some misinterpretation by Burnet of Kral's method of reporting W.) But in the Sophist as elsewhere in vol. I collations largely due to Dr W. S. M. Nicoll added new facts about all of BDTWP and their correctors, and the search for testimonia largely carried out by Dr E. A. Duke added new facts in that area. A reviewer counts 66 changes in our text of the Sophist, which may perhaps be a slight over-estimate. Classification of changes as substantive or as falling into different groups is sometimes difficult, but I think plausible figures are as follows. We (myself aided in the earlier sections by Nicoll) have in 25 places made a different choice of readings from the primary mss. and testimonia. We have printed conjectures where Burnet kept a ms. reading in 17 places, but conversely we have reverted to a ms. reading where Burnet had a conjecture in 8 places. We have printed alternative conjectures to conjectures adopted by Burnet in 6 places. So we have actually departed from the primary sources on at most 9 more occasions overall than Burnet. What must be noted is that Burnet had already printed conjectures (including readings from secondary mss.) on something like 87 occasions (12 from secondary mss., 75 from modern conjectures from Stephanus onwards), so our percentage addition to Burnet's departures from the primary sources is modest. Moreover Burnet printed about 25 readings from testimonia; we have followed him in 20 or so of these cases, and this in turn implies that the primary mss. are in error at these further 20 places. It needs to be underlined that though Burnet undoubtedly deserved to be regarded as a safe and cautious editor, nevertheless he departed from the primary mss. on average about twice per Stephanus page in this dialogue. Sometimes, of course, testimonia showed him right to do this, but testimonia cover only a quite small part of this dialogue. Otherwise Burnet accepted almost 90 conjectures. For the Politicus the figures are fairly similar; Burnet accepted 22 Byzantine conjectures and 35–40 more modern ones. The new OCT there adds 15 or so more (not all new) conjectures. (On the Politicus in the new OCT see Robinson [1995].)

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , May 1999 , pp. 139 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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Footnotes

*

I must thank my colleague, Paolo Crivelli, who has kindly offered discussion, corrections, and cautions on drafts of these notes. I owe much to conversation with many Platonists, not least Lesley Brown. Equally I am still vividly conscious of the impact of Gwil Owen's Plato class, very many years ago.

References

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